The Right Tool for the Job
Pete Jutras Ph.D., NCTM, is Assistant Professor of Piano, at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music of the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, where he serves as Piano Pedagogy and Class Piano Specialist. Prior to his recent move to Athens, Pete maintained an independent teaching studio in Dallas, TX for ten years. His research on adult piano students has been published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, and he is a frequent presenter at national and local conferences.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you
tend to see every problem as a nail.”
– Abraham Maslow
How helpless we feel when we don‘t have the right tool for the job, and how easy life becomes when we do find the tool we need.
The nuts and bolts of basketball goals
Christmas Eve ...
My two boys had been asking Santa for a basketball goal for weeks — for once they actually agreed on something. They wanted a “real” goal for the driveway, so they could shoot real basketballs. Nerf basketball was fun for a while, but has become passé in our house. Santa dutifully delivered the goal early so it could be put together for Christmas morning, but the goal came in a rather large, narrow box. After one look I decided that “some assembly required” qualified as the understatement of the year, if not my lifetime. 54 parts, 18 major steps (each with lots of little substeps), and nothing but small pictures with intersecting dotted lines and arrows to provide instruction.
While my wife heroically kept the kids away from the driveway, I began to assemble the 10-foot monster with the assistance of my father and my father-in-law. After all, the instructions did point out that at least two capable adults were required for this operation.
Three hours later we were getting closer, but there had been some setbacks. One bolt wouldn‘t fit inside its hole, some holes weren‘t threaded properly, and one instruction called for part #55. (This in itself is fine, but not when the part list only goes up to #54.) As these obstacles popped up, frustration mounted — after all, we were working against a hard deadline.
I grew up around my parents‘ smalltown hardware store, and both of my grandfathers were very adept with tools. Although I went into music, a little of this hardware sense rubbed off on me, and I do have some decent equipment in my garage.
When the hole for the bolt wasn‘t large enough, I looked for a large drill bit to see if we could punch through the steel and get it to the right size. A-ha! I found just what I needed in an old set of bits that once belonged to my grandfather. Problem solved, right? Nope. The drill bit was too large to fit my drill.
In the true spirit of saving Christmas, my father (now retired from the hardware business) went to his car to check his toolbox. Magically, he had a drill-bit adapter that would allow the right size drill bit to fit into the chuck on my drill. Also in the toolbox were some other rare items that helped us fight through the manufacturing defects and put the goal together. As we finally neared completion, I couldn‘t help but think, “How would someone without these specialized tools be able to assemble this?”
The answer is they wouldn‘t — they would have to pack everything up and return to the store, after a disappointing Christmas day. If the product had been made properly, a few wrenches and two screwdrivers would get the job done, but in our case, having the right tools was essential, and these tools were the only thing that made this basketball goal appear in the driveway on Christmas morning.
The piano toolbox
In piano playing, practicing, and teaching, we constantly encounter things in need of “repair.” If we have access to the right tools, the musical repair can be easy. If, however, our repertoire of tools is limited, we may find fixing a musical spot as difficult as trying to loosen a nut with a screwdriver. One of the most important lessons I learned from my father and my grandfathers was the importance of having the right tool for the job.
When we send our students home to practice, do they head home with a well-equipped “toolbox” of different practice and diagnostic strategies? Or are they limited to one or two options? In observed practice of children, researchers have often noted how frequently children just go back to the beginning of a piece and “try it again,” showing little variety in how they approach problems. Most professionals would have a menu of practice options to help them overcome a particular spot, but students are often limited to a routine trio of starting over, trying hands alone, and/or practicing slower, if we‘re lucky. There are a wealth of techniques and practice approaches designed to solve specific problems or develop specific skills. Revealing these to our students will help them equip their toolbox and solve more challenges on their own.
Having tools is important, but it is equally important to know how to use them. If we are showing our students some different practice tools and strategies in the lesson we‘re headed in the right direction, but we also need to make sure that the student understands how, where, and why these strategies should be used. In addition to showing your students a variety of practice tools, be sure to give them some potential problems to solve and see if they understand how (and where) to use their new tools. My grandfather had some pretty cool tools in his shop, but because I didn‘t know how to use some of them (or even what they were for), those particular tools were relatively useless to me.
It is also important to keep our tools up-to-date and current. Some tools have changed very little over the years (like a hammer), while others have developed and improved (a cordless screwdriver makes many jobs much easier than the traditional solar-powered variety). It is my sincere hope that the articles in every issue of Keyboard Companion can help you stay updated and provide you with some new and interesting tools contributed from a variety of viewpoints.
While every issue is packed with practical solutions, I think you‘ll find the current issue especially helpful in providing some basic tools (and even mini-workshops) for solving some of the most common problems in teaching. In our cover story Marvin Blickenstaff provides a wealth of tools and ideas for teaching phrasing, one of the most essential elements in musical performance. In the Reading and Rhythm departments Bruce Berr and Craig Sale switch hats and provide immensely practical ideas on solving common reading problems and teaching students to feel subdivisions of the beat. Home Practice provides some useful ideas for helping our students practice memorization. Tony Caramia presents a full complement of tools for working through Gershwin‘s Blue Lullaby in this issue‘s Jazz &Pop column. In our Adult Piano Study department, a panel of adult teachers share helpful tips on helping adult students who have established poor technical habits. Perspectives in Pedagogy and Repertoire &Performance present extremely useful information on the learning process and how to reach students who have different learning styles. And, working from a broader perspective, there are useful ideas in Technology and News and Views to help you motivate students in the summer and discuss career options with students who are interested in majoring in music.
I hope that you find the tools in this issue especially useful in improving your teaching and helping you to improve your students‘ practicing. It is the effort to renew and add to our toolboxes that helps keep our teaching fresh and inspired. After all, as any good hardware man will attest, you can never have too many tools!
Sound off!
How does our magazine “sound” to you? Your input and feedback help to make this magazine a vibrant community of companions. Please let us know what you think, either about the magazine in general or about specific articles. We would like to run more letters to the editor in future magazines, and we would welcome your comments, questions, reactions, and ideas. Please write us at editor@keyboardcompaion. com or send your letters to Pete Jutras, Editor-in-Chief, Hugh Hodgson School of Music, 250 River Road, Athens, GA 30602. I look forward to hearing the “sound” of your voices on all matters, large and small!